Accurate and precise liquid, solid, and matter movement or transport of dispensing across the macro, micro and nano worlds to a destination is of interest in countless areas including: drug and liquid product manufacturing; proteomics; genomics; bio and other agent detection; forensics; homeland and airport security; medical diagnostics and other health care area; environmental and other areas and manufacturing of all types. The ability to accurately and precisely transport liquids can be employed to manufacture drugs or prescriptions; prepare samples for chemical analysis or for medical diagnostics tests by many techniques, for bioagent detection and the standardization of such measurement processes or for handling such materials or for forensics testing; to place chemicals, drugs or samples onto food, plants, animals humans (or take them off) other objects or into scientific or other instruments or to perform isolation and purification functions; such as, filtration; solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatography (LC) in one or a plurality of channels using only IBF or so doing with hybrid, coordinated and programmed multi energy source. The ability to manipulate small and large quantities of liquids using electric fields has other lesser known potential including: manufacturing new entities such as electronic components; frozen charged functionalized chemical entities and polymers that we have called nanoliter-sicles or more recently chargemers, in cooling applications, in repairing crystalline optics for large lasers, for parallel liquid chromatography, solid phased extraction (SPE), filtration and increasing the dynamic range of solution transport to existing pumping systems of diverse types.
Devices that transport and optionally simultaneously treat and measure low quantities of liquids for such purposes have historically been largely mechanical in nature and they include: microliter syringes of all types; capillaries with attached bulbs; single and multichannel pipettes and many different types of common pumps. More recently other devices have been applied to transport small quantities of liquids for various purposes including: piezoelectric devices; ink jets and other electromechanical devices and lab chips. Such devices are not capable of dispensing liquids and performing useful functions across the macro, micro and the nano regimes (i.e., from mLs, to uLs to nLs to pLs to fLs) singly or in parallel with one source of energy or with multiple sources of energy whose programmed application is coordinated or integrated and that can measure and verify liquid movement and treatment launching and directing the product to targets. Either they cannot accurately transport the liquids across such a dynamic range or they have adverse properties including: inability to overcome adhesion and/or cohesion of small volume of liquids or liquid drops adhering to surfaces and as such they must touch off the liquid possibly contaminating the liquid or target, the device or both. Or once launched, they are not directed to the target or counted on arrival across the micron to meter distances used in labs and factories. Alternatively, even when for example low volumes of liquids are produced (but not higher volumes) they are not directed by the drop producing process and they can take trajectories that are not directed to locales causing errant location dispensing. Also, many low volume dispensing systems have large dead volumes, are complicated, and expensive in design and requiring at least one energy source per channel. Also they can exhibit adverse electrochemistry; produce joule heating; or combinations thereof; that impact reliability and cost. Also, such devices again, cannot create and energize liquids, creating either drops or sprays, launch (i.e., via a push or pull force, as when either the device or target is charged) such that they are actively directed to locales or targets that can be non-conducting or conducting doing so without touching the target as it provides the energy to overcome the adhesion and cohesion of a liquid or liquids in drop, spray or hybrid form on the nested gaussian surfaces, N channels at a time with a minimum of one source of energy or optionally more than one source of energy that are integrated to an affect with IBF, as they optionally measure the amount of matter transferred.
Technology that we have called induction based fluidics can make a simple capillaries, common syringes, pipettes, pumps of all types dispense, treat, introduce or optionally modify polymeric liquids over more than nine order of magnitude and it has massive application space in matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectroscopy (e.g., LC/MALDI) in cancer diagnostics and proteomics, for sampling humans in a non dispersive manner, for placing drugs onto humans, in polymer characterizations and polymer manufacturing, in the area of cooling entities in enclosures and many other areas of health care and basic research and in manufacturing of drugs and special entities.
We have patented (U.S. Pat. No. 6,149,815) and have now three pending patents and technology that can dispense liquids as it also performs functions across a massive dynamic range of literally in certain configurations and energy from mLs to fLs whose core process has no moving parts, no joule heating, no adverse electrochemistry (i.e., faradaic processes) and that can perform parallel dispensing, parallel solid phase extraction, parallel filtration, parallel LC and parallel instrument introduction and more using as few as one source of energy and often very powerfully integrated IBF-other energy forms or types where for N channels where N can literally be a very large number, as it directs the liquid to targets.
We have taken this patented tool set that we call induction based fluidics and we have expanded the capabilities to small, less complicated even handheld devices that can dispense, literally fly liquids, as it directs liquids in the uL, nL and pL volume range using off-the-shelf devices like microliter syringes, pipette tips, pumps of all types developing a totally new technology that can place nanoliters onto humans or take them off of humans or make MALDI spot plates in parallel or manufacture charged frozen nanoliter spheres that we have called nanoliter-sicles and that an be made into charged polymers, chargemers, that can be aspirated by charged on non-charged rods, and as we have merged this IBF technology into more traditional older pumps; so that, IBF can be applied in tandem to other liquid transport technology gaining the benefit or IBF including a wide dynamic range, highly parallel dispensing and other sample treatment options, excellent volumetric and spatial accuracy and precision plus unique capabilities and significant advances to larger fields of application. In addition, we have now added new technology that an simplify these task using new circuitry, disposable tips, current measuring devices, in mounted, robotically assisted or in handheld embodiments of using inductive or conductive energy transfer tools that can be either battery operated or DC or AC powered. Powerfully, this new integrated IBF system can be adapted to virtually with any current robotic based or other dispensing system at low cost, as we have done with devices as diverse as a Gilson, P2 pipette, a Hamilton 701 microliter syringe, or Spark Holland's Alias LC liquid handling robotic system.
In summary, this application extends IBF such that the technology can employ as little as one source of electrical energy alone or use multiple sources of energy in an integrated manner or where multiple sources of energy are coordinated in tandem to transport, launch or fly, move or dispense rapidly one or more liquids as a low volume discrete aligned drops or spray to non-conducting or optionally to conducting targets one at a time or in a highly parallel manner across the mL, uL, nL, p L and fL dynamic volume range as it actively/passively directs the liquid to precise locations on inanimate or animate targets whether they are conductors or nonconductors. When the nested, gaussian surfaces so energized contain filters or fits, SPE media, chromatographic phases, immunoassay or other functionalized media the device can perform many functions in a highly parallel manner on the liquids; such as, filter, extract, chromatograph, purify and place or otherwise transform the liquid and other matter or its contents as they serially perform the transport function in a parallel mode optionally placing the liquid onto a target or targets be they surfaces, containers, scientific instruments, chemicals, drugs, food products, plant, animal or human subjects or other targets as it provides one or more ways to quantify the volume, and locations of the liquid/s providing other ways to facilitate operation. When the current of such process are measured by electrical, visual or thermal means, one channel or multiple channels at a time and written to digital media the transport of matter or composite actions can be verified and recorded.
When such systems dispense monomers, they can produce upon polymerization unique polymers called chargemers or in other applications when the use of inductive surfaces are energized, cooling effects can be produced in enclosures cooling the contents thereof and finally because of the ability to launch small drops directly and to keep them aligned by electric fields this technology can be used to shoot liquids into mass spectrometers (MS) and other scientific and other instruments increasing greatly, the sensitivity of all types of technology; such as, electrospray ionization (ESI) MS.
This application further extends IBF and previous work, through the application of unique energy inductors that can be appended to existing devices and whose energy can be programmed in one or more form to effect liquid movement into microtiter plates or onto MALDI or other surfaces
Because the physical movement of fluids; solids; slurries; drugs; solvents; and charged matter is so elementary to so many processes in biotechnology, health care, manufacturing, daily life and other areas it is impossible to adequately address all applications of this matter transport technology.